2005

We present a robust automatic method for modeling cyclic 3D human motion such as walking using motion-capture data. The pose of the body is represented by a time-series of joint angles which are automatically segmented into a sequence of motion cycles. The mean and the principal components of these cycles are computed using a new algorithm that enforces smooth transitions between the cycles by operating in the Fourier domain. Key to this method is its ability to automatically deal with noise and missing data. A learned walking model is then exploited for Bayesian tracking of 3D human motion.

We present a switching Kalman filter model for the real-time inference of hand kinematics from a population of motor cortical neurons. Firing rates are modeled as a Gaussian mixture where the mean of each Gaussian component is a linear function of hand kinematics. A “hidden state” models the probability of each mixture component and evolves over time in a Markov chain. The model generalizes previous encoding and decoding methods, addresses
the non-Gaussian nature of firing rates, and can cope with crudely sorted neural data common in on-line prosthetic applications.

Recently, the assumed goal of computer vision, reconstructing a representation of the scene, has been critcized as unproductive and impractical. Critics have suggested that the reconstructive approach should be supplanted by a new purposive approach that emphasizes functionality and task driven perception at the cost of general vision. In response to these arguments, we claim that the recovery paradigm central to the reconstructive approach is viable, and, moreover, provides a promising framework for understanding and modeling general purpose vision in humans and machines. An examination of the goals of vision from an evolutionary perspective and a case study involving the recovery of optic flow support this hypothesis. In particular, while we acknowledge that there are instances where the purposive approach may be appropriate, these are insufficient for implementing the wide range of visual tasks exhibited by humans (the kind of flexible vision system presumed to be an end-goal of artificial intelligence). Furthermore, there are instances, such as recent work on the estimation of optic flow, where the recovery paradigm may yield useful and robust results. Thus, contrary to certain claims, the purposive approach does not obviate the need for recovery and reconstruction of flexible representations of the world.

1990

We propose a model for the recovery of visual motion fields from image sequences. Our model exploits three constraints on the motion of a patch in the environment: i) Data Conservation: the intensity structure corresponding to an environmental surface patch changes gradually over time; ii) Spatial Coherence: since surfaces have spatial extent neighboring points have similar motions; iii) Temporal Coherence: the direction and velocity of motion for a surface patch changes gradually. The formulation of the constraints takes into account the possibility of multiple motions at a particular location. We also present a highly parallel computational model for realizing these constraints in which computation occurs locally, knowledge about the motion increases over time, and occlusion and disocclusion boundaries are estimated. An implementation of the model using a stochastic temporal updating scheme is described. Experiments with both synthetic and real imagery are presented.

Surface discontinuities are detected in a sequence of images by exploiting physical constraints at early stages in the processing of visual motion. To achieve accurate early discontinuity detection we exploit five physical constraints on the presence of discontinuities: i) the shape of the sum of squared differences (SSD) error surface in the presence of surface discontinuities; ii) the change in the shape of the SSD surface due to relative surface motion; iii) distribution of optic flow in a neighborhood of a discontinuity; iv) spatial consistency of discontinuities; V) temporal consistency of discontinuities. The constraints are described, and experimental results on sequences of real and synthetic images are presented. The work has applications in the recovery of environmental structure from motion and in the generation of dense optic flow fields.

Our goal is to understand the principles of Perception, Action and Learning in autonomous systems that successfully interact with complex environments and to use this understanding to design future systems